


The Consequences of Misidentifying a Corpse

by darkest_bird



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Experiments, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Post-ASiB, Scars, Sexy Times, just kind of silly really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-12 04:28:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10482075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkest_bird/pseuds/darkest_bird
Summary: It all began because Sherlock didn't know Irene's body as well as he thought. He's determined not to make the same mistake with John's.





	1. Chapter 1

All of London was awake, watching the clock, except for Mrs. Hudson, who was downstairs and asleep. She had had a trying day. Being assaulted and held at gunpoint by a small posse of Americans will do that to an old woman, even one as hale and hearty as Mrs. H.

Upstairs, the fairy lights still twinkled and the lamps were dimmed, but neither Sherlock nor John was thinking of sleep.

While Sherlock unpacked his violin, John poured himself a whiskey. Champagne was traditional at New Year’s, but neither of them had thought to buy any. John had expected to be out on a date with Janette (who had dumped him on Christmas Eve), and Sherlock didn’t really do holidays unless under intense coercion. So tonight found them both at home. And—from John’s perspective anyway—there were things to talk about. One in particular.

“Where is it now?” John asked. He didn’t need to clarify what. They both knew.

“Where no one will look.” Sherlock stepped to the window, fitting the instrument beneath his chin as he twisted the screw on the end of the bow to tighten the hairs.

“Whatever’s on that phone is more than just pictures.” John had been exerting considerable effort _not_ to imagine the nature of those pictures; but his overactive imagination on that count was failing miserably in the other: just what could the woman be hiding? He was hoping Sherlock might enlighten him. He did not.

“Yes, it is,” Sherlock said vaguely. He seemed more interested in tuning the E-string.

But John didn’t really want to talk about the phone.

“So she’s alive then.”

In the distance, they both heard it: midnight. The very first seconds of the new year rolled over London on the dark peal of a bell.

“Happy New Year, John.”

“Do you think you’ll be seeing her again?”

Sherlock didn’t answer. He flipped the bow into the air and caught it deftly. Then he began to play. “Auld Lang Syne” filled 221B, and John sighed and sat in his chair. _Should old acquaintance be forgot indeed_ , he thought. But he highly doubted that Sherlock would anytime soon forget the Woman. The thought irked him, though he couldn’t say why.

He took a drink. “Does it bother you?” he asked when Sherlock reached the end of the song but before his bow had lifted from the string.

“Does what bother me?” Sherlock said wearily, like indulging a child. He began to play another verse.

“That you got it wrong.”

The violin screeched, and Sherlock whirled toward him, a look of offense etched across his face.

John, loosened by alcohol, was unperturbed. “I mean, you misidentified the body. That’s kind of embarrassing. For you.”

“The face was a crater,” Sherlock said in his own defence. “Teeth bashed in, eyeballs gone, skull shattered—”

“Yeah,” said John dismissively, “but you misidentified the _body_. I mean, you did get a pretty good look at it.” He sipped a little more, enjoying the burn in his throat. “Good enough to get the full _measure_ of her, if you know what I mean. Passcodes and all. Pretty damn impressive, even for you. You’re a quick study, you are. And yet.” He shrugged.

Sherlock was not about to be thought so little of. Not by John, of all people. “The corpse was a decoy, as it was meant to be. She found a woman who shared her exact measurements. Simple.”

“And what? Same tan lines? Same mole patterns? Not even an errant freckle?”

“I didn’t _memorise her_ , John. God. Go to bed, why don’t you?”

John chuckled and threw back the rest of the whiskey. Maybe it was a little cruel, but he did enjoy getting under Sherlock’s skin. If Sherlock could mock him for the number of girlfriends he had in the course of a year, he could surely tease him for how he looked at a naked woman. He stood with a groan.

“Night then. Do remember to unplug the lights. Our electricity bill was way up last month because of your microwave experiments.”

Sherlock made some sort of growling response and returned to his violin playing. John hummed along as he made his way up the stairs to his room, undressed, and fell into bed, belly warmed and quite content.

#

“You’re right, John,” Sherlock said at breakfast the next morning, breaking into his soft-boiled egg.

“Hm?” John was thumbing through the paper and scanning headlines for an article of interest. In his other hand, he balanced a bit of egg on the corner of his toast.

“I didn’t know her body well enough to positively identify it. It’s a mistake I should not wish to repeat.”

It took a few seconds for his comment to register in John’s brain. He hadn’t gone to bed _drunk_ last night, just a little buzzed, so there was no reason for his brain to be working so sluggishly. What had he just said? Slowly, John set the toast on the plate and looked up from the paper.

“Eh?”

“I said”—Sherlock sighed; he did not like having to repeat himself—“if I had been more familiar with her body, I would not have misidentified the corpse. You have put your finger on an unacceptable gap in my knowledge, and I intend to rectify it.”

John barely stopped his mouth from dropping open and revealing half-eaten toast-and-egg. “You what?”

“You object?”

“No . . .” He wasn’t quite sure how to respond at all, frankly. He cleared his throat. “I mean, no, of course I don’t. I just didn’t think . . . That is, I didn’t know you wanted . . . That is . . .” How did Sherlock intend to do _that?_ Though she clearly wasn’t opposed to further, erm, inspection, for all either of them knew, Irene Adler had fled to Japan.

“If there are no objections, then perhaps my examination may commence directly following breakfast.”

After breakfast? Wait, did Sherlock have _photographs?_ Had he cracked into the phone last night? Might he . . . let John have a peek?

“You, uh, need any help?” John asked, trying to sound casual.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Your cooperation would be _marvelous_ ,” he said with an extra measure of sarcasm than usual. He sipped from his teacup. “I imagine you’d prefer to undress yourself.”

Had John been drinking from his glass of orange juice at that moment, he would have spewed it across the table. “P-pardon?” he spluttered instead.

“Honestly, John, how much _did_ you have to drink last night.”

“You want me to do _what?_ ”

“Are you even listening!” Sherlock dropped his cutlery to throw up his hands. “In our line of work, the probability of one or the other of us dying a violent and body-mangling death is significantly higher than in other professions. I do not hope for it, but I must be prepared to identify your corpse in the unhappy event that you are killed and your face mutilated beyond recognition. Therefore, as you most rightly point out, I need to be able to identify you via other corporeal markers. I can do this only if I thoroughly examine your body.”

This time, John’s mouth did fall open. Fortunately, he had finished swallowing. After several long seconds of silence, Sherlock must have assumed the conversation ended and went back to his egg.

“You’re not examining my body, Sherlock.”

Again, Sherlock let the spoon drop. “This was your idea!”

“That”—John pointed a finger at an imaginary idea suspended in the air—“was most certainly not my idea.”

“Look.” Sherlock twisted in his seat to more squarely face John. “I know your height, weight, skin tone, and hand shapes. I know you have a scar in your left shoulder, but I’ve never seen it. And other identifying markers are a mystery to me. So imagine that you’ve been decapitated, your head stolen, and your body left behind.”

“Jesus Christ,” John said, burying his face in his hands.

“I’d feel much better knowing that the body left behind is undoubtedly yours, and not confuse it with another decapitated corpse.”

“This isn’t a very likely scenario, Sherlock.”

“And Irene Adler faking her death was?” He stood from the table, licking his fingertips of salt and dabs of yolk. “A detective should know these things about his closest colleague. I’m going to shower and dress. When I get back, we can start.”

#

John spent the next twelve minutes pacing the sitting room, going up and down the stairs, changing shirts, and to one degree or another freaking out. Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe this, erm, “examination” really _was_ in the interest of prudence. For, you know. Just in case. Sherlock just wanted to check for, like, moles and birthmarks and things. Right? That wasn’t so weird. He performed such routine checks on patients all the time. It was standard practice for a doctor. And no, Sherlock wasn’t a doctor, but it was still, you know, professional.

All the same, the thought of Sherlock looking at him so closely made him feel a little funny. John was a conservative dresser by nature. He liked his collars buttoned and his shirts tucked. So by the time Sherlock reappeared in the sitting room, John had drawn the curtains closed and bolted the front door, just in case Mrs. Hudson decided to pop her head in and wish them both a happy New Year.

“You’re still dressed,” said Sherlock, like he was disappointed in a child who had disobeyed him.

John wasn’t _dressed_ dressed. He still wore his pyjama bottoms and his dressing gown cinched at the waist. But beneath, he had on only a white vest. Sitting at the table, he tried his damndest not to look uncomfortable.

“Rules, Sherlock. Let’s get a few things straight.”

Sherlock sighed and rolled his eyes, but John ploughed ahead before he could get a word in.

“One article at a time. That is, one _limb_ at a time, okay? And nothing in this”—he indicated his groin area with an overly large circle—“region.”

“You’re being unreasonable,” said Sherlock.

“Irene is the exhibitionist, not me,” John grumped.

“ _Fine_.”

“Good.”

“Though the data may suffer,” Sherlock said under his breath. He went to the kitchen to grab a stool and placed it in the centre of the room. Mercifully, he didn’t comment on the closed curtains or bolted door, but he did turn on a few more lamps. “Right arm, then, to start.”

John started pushing the right sleeve of the dressing gown to the elbow.

“Oh, come _on_ , John. I can’t see the whole arm like that!”

With an equally put-upon sigh, John stood and untied the belt of his dressing gown. Then he tossed it to the chair and sat on the stool, extending his right arm for examination.

But with his quick disrobing, Sherlock froze, like he hadn’t actually been expecting it. John felt the goose pimples bubbling up all over his skin, though due to the intense gaze or sudden chill, he couldn’t be sure.

“That’s more like it,” Sherlock said, though with considerably less breath than before.

“Get on with it then,” John said.

Sherlock cleared his throat. “Right.” He cleared it again.

John wasn’t entirely comfortable with his body. As a kid, he had always been the shortest in the class, even shorter than a lot of the girls, and he longed for the day when he would grow to a proper six-foot height, when his shoulders would square off and his tummy flatten out and his pecs achieve optimal manly definition. It never happened. At least, not the way it had happened for Blair McCready and Michael Sullivan and Iain Mason and all the other rugby players. He never peaked above five-foot six, and his shoulders remained rounded and his tummy still soft and his chest too undefined.

The Army had changed things, to a degree. Physical training and a regimented diet couldn’t make him taller, but it gave him angles instead of curves, muscle instead of baby fat, and most importantly, he no longer felt like a man trapped in a boy’s body. It had been a year now, since he’d been shot and invalided home, and he had lost some of what he had gained in terms of both bodily definition and confidence. Not entirely, of course. He was still active and healthy. But some of the old insecurities had returned, reawakened under the scrutiny of Sherlock’s gaze.

His examination began.

What John had initially presumed would be a surface observance of the marks on the skin quickly turned out to be quite a bit more involved.

Sherlock started with the fingers of John’s right hand, beginning with each nail, probably each _cuticle_. At first, it did seem like mere observation, silent observation. Sherlock was just looking. Looking _intensely_ , yes, but John had come to expect intensity from Sherlock. He turned the hand over and examined John’s palm like a fortune-teller studying a life line. Then, he began to touch.

It was exploratory, more than anything. Sherlock ran a finger over a callus that had formed on his index finger, where he pulled a trigger. He prodded the knuckle of his index finger, which was larger than the others. He manipulated John's hand to bend at the wrist, testing its range of motion. He brushed the fine hairs beginning on the back of the hand, before they thickened and darkened as they travelled up the arm.

“Anything interesting over there?” John joked, mostly because he couldn’t stand how quiet the room had gotten.

Sherlock didn’t answer out loud, but John saw the word on his barely moving lips: _Everything_.

Slowly, as he made his inquisitive way shoulder-ward, everything became very _tactile_. John knew that Sherlock was a great believer in utilizing the five senses in his work, but as he had never been the object of inspection, he had never fully realized just how probing it could be. It seemed Sherlock was touching every inch of skin he could find: the soft inner arm enjoyed ( _enjoyed??_ ) the light brush of thumbs; the coarser outer arm was kneaded like dough (“I’m determining your muscle definition, John”); and the skin at the crook of his arm, when grazed with the light pad of fingertips, jumped and John giggled.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Ticklish?”

“A bit, yeah.” He forced his voice a little deeper, a little gruffer. “Don’t do it again.”

Though Sherlock maintained an air of professional disinterest, the light of amusement shone in his eyes, making John look away as his cheeks began to heat.

He pulled at the looser, rougher skin at the elbow and traveled further up the arm. John was no longer holding up the arm on his own, and had resigned himself to Sherlock’s exam. That was, until Sherlock ran into the white jersey fabric separating shoulder from neck. Sherlock pulled it aside slowly, down one shoulder, and something funny turned over in John’s stomach. His breath hitched. At the same time, from the stairwell, two sets of footsteps were ascending.

“Pity, on New Year’s Day!” Mrs. Hudson was saying.

“Murderers don’t take a holiday, I’m afraid,” said Lestrade. “Sorry. _Suspected_ murderers.”

John shot off the chair and bolted for the bathroom. The examination was over. At least, for the moment.


	2. Chapter 2

“An overreaction.”

“Was not.”

“Was too.”

“This is stupid. Your experiment is stupid.”

“Examination, not experiment. And it’s necessary, John. When we get back from solving this case, I intend to continue.”

John stared out the window of the back of the taxi. His whole body was tensed, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to relax.

“It’s unnecessary. If I’m decapitated and only a corpse left behind, as per your horrible scenario, _just check the bloody DNA!_ ”

“DNA is only as good as the records you k _—_ ”

“You wanker! You _did_ follow me to Battersea, and you _hid_ while I dealt with that woman on my own, defending _your_ arse, by the way.”

“Defending your own, you mean.”

“What? What is that supposed to mean?”

“Aha. We’re here.”

John had never been so tense at a crime scene. While Sherlock examined the weirdly contorted body in the mud, they kept making snarky, biting comments at one another until Lestrade finally intervened by threatening to send them home if they couldn’t play nice together.

At last, Sherlock straightened and pulled off the latex gloves. “She’s Irish, came to London for New Year’s Eve, had too much to drink, and stumbled into the street and got hit by an oncoming car. You can see flecks of windscreen glass in her hair. Also, the car was dark blue. It’ll have a cracked windscreen. Obviously. The driver panicked and dragged her broken body here, behind this Indian restaurant. Simple. Honestly, Lestrade, learn to detect, why don’t you?”

The taxi ride back to the flat was deathly silent. They couldn’t even look at each other.

“No more fuss,” said Sherlock, following him into the flat and closing the door behind him. Bolting it, as to John’s preference, was his indication that he fully intended to proceed and would even endeavour to make John as comfortable as possible. He even twitched the curtains shut, although he had remarked earlier that it was highly unlikely anyone could see in, as they were a story off the ground.

For a moment, John hesitated. Should he put his foot down and refuse to participate in the _examination_ any further? Or just bite his tongue and get it over with? In the end, he decided that normalcy couldn’t return until he got this over with. So once again, he perched himself on the stool. He was more fully dressed than before, though. He wore trousers and shoes, for instance. But he shucked his coat, tossed it aside, pulled his cable-knit jumper over his head, untucked and unbuttoned his shirt, and once again found himself in nothing but the sleeveless white undershirt. Sherlock watched all this with excessive patience.

“Ready?”

John didn’t answer, just stuck out his left arm and waited.

Again, Sherlock started with the fingertips, the hand, worked his way to the wrist, then the elbow, noting everything: the dark blue veins beneath the skin, the spattering of moles, the pattern of hair. And an old scar just above the elbow.

“What’s this?” Sherlock asked, running a finger across the seam. John couldn’t see it very well himself unless in front of a mirror.

“Scar,” said John.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Clearly. About twenty years old, I would guess. A deep cut, though not from a blade. It’s not clean enough. I was asking what happened.”

“Can’t you deduce that, too?”

“ _John._ ”

“Sorry, sorry.” He shouldn’t ridicule Sherlock’s attempts to be human. “We’d won a rugby match, me and the lads, and went out to celebrate. I was only sixteen. A fight broke out, and I tried to intervene.”

“Yes, that sounds like you.”

John couldn’t tell if he was being critical or complimentary. Ignoring it altogether, he continued, “At some point, a beer bottle was broken, and I landed on top of it. Voila.”

“And this?”

Sherlock’s fingers had traveled further north to a long but thin and shining scar on John’s bicep.

“Mate had a motorbike. I dropped something, bent to retrieve it, lost my balance, and fell into it. The exhaust, you know? Scalding hot.”

“Must have been pretty bad to leave a scar this pronounced after all these years.”

John clamped up, wondering if Sherlock had spotted the lie. But after so long of repeating that story to friends and girlfriends, he pretty much believed it himself by now. It was a lot easier to say than _My dad woke me up with a skewer heated in the oven. He thought it was funny._

It wasn’t the only scar Mr. Watson had bequeathed his son, but he had cover stories for those, too, even for the few in places Sherlock simply wasn’t allowed to see.

“May I see the bullet scar, please,” said Sherlock with a small mouth, like he feared John’s would snap at him or tell him to go to hell. But this one John had anticipated from the start.

“Have at it,” he said, forcing a smile to show Sherlock he wouldn’t get upset.

With the sleeveless undershirt, it was already partly visible, but Sherlock carefully pulled the strap of cloth down John’s shoulder for a better look. To John’s surprise, though, Sherlock suddenly twisted away, but it was only to grab the standing lamp and drag it closer. “Needs better lighting,” he said.

“Ah hell,” said John. And he grabbed the bottom of the undershirt and pulled it up and over his head. “Just do it.”

The abrupt motion halted Sherlock in his tracks. Lamp in hand, cord dragging on the floor, he stared at John on the stool, bare from the belt up. John regretted his spur decision and wished for the shirt back. He felt terribly exposed, and embarrassed. _What’s done is done_ , he thought, in an effort to buck himself up.

Sherlock recovered. He moved quickly to stand behind John and positioned the lamp. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, the light touch of fingertips on his left shoulder, just above the scar, hesitated.

“Did it hurt?”

John stopped himself from scoffing. Did it hurt? A small metal bullet had blasted its way through his body, in one side and out the other, tearing apart skin, muscle, and bone. It had hurt like hell! But the question gave him pause. He had heard too many stories, as a doctor and soldier both, of men who had been shot or stabbed and didn’t even know it, not right away. There was no pain, only adrenaline. It hadn’t been his experience (if only he had been so lucky!), but it happened. He supposed Sherlock was curious about the experience of taking a bullet. How badly does it hurt?

“Like the dickens,” said John, forcing a smile again. But it slipped off quickly. Something about sitting so exposed was making him feel a little extra honest. “It was like my whole body was on fire. I could hardly think straight. I was sure I was dying.”

“Does it hurt now?”

“Depends,” said John, sighing, though not impatiently. “When the weather turns, or it gets too cold, or I move too fast in the morning and haven’t stretched.” He laughed shortly. “It reminds me it’s there. But no. Not on the surface. It’s deeper. You can . . . you can touch it. If you want.”

Sherlock did want. But it was strange. He didn’t prod or poke at it with his fingertips, like he had been doing with the other scars. Instead, he flattened his hand and laid it over the whole healed wound, like a warming pad. And he just held it there. John held his breath. What was Sherlock doing? What was he thinking? What was he . . . feeling?

“It’s warmer than the rest of you,” Sherlock said. “By a fraction of a degree. Interesting.”

Interesting indeed, thought John, who was feeling warmer all over.

Sherlock’s hand smoothed over the scar, dragging down, and with it, Sherlock lowered himself to a crouch behind John on the stool, continuing to explore his whole back. He was more tactile now than before. His hands were roaming, pressing, _feeling_. They crossed a constellation of benign moles. They stroked the skin from side to center, measuring John’s waist and upper dimensions. They skimmed the wavy ridges of his spine like the wooden bars of a marimba, and John nearly sang the rising scale. _My God_ , he thought, _what is happening?_ as his back arched.

Sherlock suddenly stood, made an about-face, and strode into the kitchen.

John didn’t trust his voice just then to ask, “Is that it??” But he did swivel in offense, only to see Sherlock whip open a cupboard and grab a glass. He filled it at the sink, drained it in three mighty gulps, and filled it again.

When he returned, it was with a look of steely resolve. “Front,” he declared with an attitude of determined professionalism, and he squared off in front of John, preparing to examine the bared front. Collarbone. Pectorals. Abdomen.

John’s only defense was a good-for-the-gander quip: “Once we’re done with me, I should return the favour.”

But Sherlock didn’t laugh. He didn’t even crack a smile. Instead, he regarded John with the utmost seriousness and said, “Do you really want this to continue?”

“What?”

“I said, do you really want this to _—_ ”

“No, no, I heard you. I just . . . Don’t you?”

“You know I do.”

Were they still talking about the same thing?

“But I need to know. Do _you_ , John?”

John swallowed. They weren’t talking about the examination anymore. Not really. He didn’t know what to say.

“I think,” said Sherlock, stepping backward after waiting too long for an answer, “we should stop.”

He stepped around John, who remained immobilized on the stool, and left the flat without another word.


	3. Chapter 3

John went to bed before Sherlock got back, but he was still awake when he heard his flatmate’s tentative return. Sherlock was walking cautiously up the stairs as though afraid to enter the sitting room and find John still awake. Safely tucked away in his own room, John listened to Sherlock move through the flat for a few minutes before finally retiring to his room.

But still, he couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about Sherlock’s hands on his skin. The electricity had been entirely unexpected, but so had the comfort. That is, he felt no need to recoil, or coach himself through it, or remind himself that being touched actually felt good. It did feel good. He craved it. From anybody, really, but he never came by it easily.

John had a complicated relationship with touch and his intimate partners. When he was still quite young and some of his scars from childhood were more noticeable than they were today, he had been rather embarrassed by his body. Size and definition aside, there were a lot of stories imprinted, carved, and burned across his skin. The first girl to ever see his arse had been repulsed, and the second couldn’t stop staring. Some had been vicariously uncomfortable with the scars, others had become too mothering and delicate, and one thought they were funny and couldn’t stop laughing. They hadn’t gone far that night.

So his skin always jumped, a little, when someone touched him in a familiar or meaningful way, skin to skin, paying attention. And no one paid attention like Sherlock Holmes. John had never told him what a dick his father had been. Not outright, anyway. He may have made a comment or two about arse-hole dads or seemed a little too interested in solving the Fletcher twin murders (it had been the father), but he didn’t talk about his parents. As far as he was concerned, it was a bygone era, living under the drunken, tyrannical rule of Dr. Kenneth Watson.

But as much as he was wary of being asked about his past, and having live hands touching the same areas that had once known such pain, as much as he was afraid of someone discovering that his flaws were more than skin-deep, he yearned for the feel of someone’s hands. Hands that weren’t cruel or repulsed but eagerly accepting of him, every part. He wanted to be touched, for the physical comfort as well as the sensual delight. He just hadn’t expected to experience both under the hands of his best mate.

That said, he had no idea what to do next.

#

Sherlock didn’t often allow himself to regret. He did what he did, and damn the consequences. But he regretted touching John.

He hadn’t expected to feel such electricity beneath his fingertips. Nothing in his past experience suggested that touching someone—even for the purposes of scientific inquiry—would inspire such longing to touch more and hold more, and to be touched and held in return.

So he had. Touched, that is. He’d given into a desire that went beyond disinterested sexamination, erm, _ex_ amination, rather. But the temptations didn’t stop with touch. Standing behind John, while he spread his fingers wide and slid them across John’s shoulder blades, push to the shoulders, he imagined going further still until his hands and arms wrapped around to John’s front and Sherlock could just _hold_ him, pressing John’s back to his own front, and then breathe him in. God, what if he’d done it? How would either of them have recovered from such embarrassment?

What the hell was wrong with him? John had clearly been uncomfortable. It had seemed so practical, though, at the first. Irene Adler’s faked death only highlighted his need to know John’s body in more objective terms. Hell, at the time, he had even been thinking of requiring the same of Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson! How quickly things had turned. Now he had forced himself into a corner where he had no choice but to reevaluate his relationship with and feelings toward John Watson, and he had arrived at some alarming conclusions.

And since his mistake, he and John had been tiptoeing around each other. John was back to wearing at least seven layers (okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but did he really have to button all the way to the chin?) and making life as bland as possible, what with his buttered toast and talk of weather and white-ass socks. God, Sherlock wanted to peel those socks off of him and chuck them out the window. He wanted to yank away that belt that cinched so securely around his waist and just loosen him up, for a change. Let the skin breathe. He hadn’t even got around yet to examining the feet or the legs, or the upper thighs. If only he’d been given the chance to go further . . .

Dammit, he needed to stop undressing John with his mind. But _dammit_ , he was just so imaginative. The curse of the genius mind.

A solid, almost physically uncomfortable week passed, and Sherlock thought that maybe the whole matter was now behind them and they could just move forward, pretending he had never proposed such ridiculous research. John was right. The likelihood of decapitation was, statistically, quite rare.

Then, out of the blue, at the end of dinner one night—spaghetti and meatballs, Mrs. Hudson’s treat (she had a keen sense for when things were amiss in ol’ 221B, and food was always her solution)—John said while sopping up the last of his tomato sauce with a hunk of French bread:

“I’ve never known you to wilfully abandon a project.”

Sherlock paused in the act of twirling his fork around the last few noodles on his plate. In the background, Mrs. Hudson had already set to work on the washing up and was humming Mary Poppins tunes.

“Pardon?”

“Cases, experiments, you always see them through.”

“Nonsense, John, I’ve abandoned plenty of both.”

“True, my mistake.” John took a large bite, as though to stopper himself. But when he swallowed, he finished, “Boredom.”

“Prudence,” Sherlock corrected, sharply.

“Sure. Prudence.”

Where was this coming from? What was John saying? Was he talking about what Sherlock _thought_ he was talking about? This past week, they hadn’t had any new cases, nor had he begun any new experiments, certainly none that he had abandoned. The nearest reference was the, ahem, examination.

But did John really want to talk about _that?_ Now? With Mrs. Hudson within earshot?

Sherlock set down his fork and leaned into the table. Keeping his voice low, he asked, “Problem?”

John shrugged. “Not at all. I’m just saying, you should finish. That is, we should. You know. See it through.” As Sherlock’s eyes went wide, John said placidly, “Like you said at the start, it might be . . . prudent.”

“You want,” said Sherlock slowly, “to finish.”

“The exam.”

“The . . . inspection?”

John chewed his bread fitfully while keeping his eyes fixed on Sherlock. When  he was fit to talk, he said, “I think it _prudent_ that you know my . . .” He dropped his voice and only mouthed the next word. “. . . body . . . as thoroughly as you know your own.” He took another big bite and chewed furiously.

 _Oh. My. God._ Was John deliberately speaking in code? Was this double entendre? Was this flirting? Or was John Watson literally the most obtuse man in the universe? Heart thumping madly, Sherlock put his big toe in the pool to test the waters.

“I have to warn you,” he said, lowering his own voice to its deepest and consequently sultriest tone, “I know my body _really_ well.”

John choked.

“Oh, John!” said Mrs. Hudson, scuttling in from the kitchen. “Wrong pipe?”

“I’m fine, Mrs Hudson,” said John, wheezing, his face purpling. He coughed a few times, trying to clear his throat.

“Drink some water,” she advised.

But John’s glass was empty. Sherlock pushed his own closer, and John accepted it gratefully.

“That’ll teach you not to swallow prematurely,” said Sherlock, smirking, just as Mrs. Hudson said, “Yes, drink it all down.”

John choked again, and kicked Sherlock beneath the table. Sherlock laughed. John’s face went from air-starved purple to mortified red. He took another drink, gulping mightily. Then, when he set the glass back down—and granted, Sherlock couldn’t be one hundred percent sure—he _thought_ he caught a wink.


	4. Chapter 4

At the surgery, John suffered terrible distraction. Professionally, he was on autopilot, telling little kids to say _ah_ , telling grown men to turn their heads and cough, asking women the dates of their last cycle. But his mind was a million miles away. That is, a couple of miles away. On Baker Street. Stuck in an imaginative loop of returning home and continuing where they had left off, and wondering where it might go from there. He was both fearful and excited. That’s what the racing heart meant, right? Fear and excitement. Danger.

The clock ticked, ticked, ticked closer to the end of the day. And the start of the night.

Why was he so nervous? What was he expecting? Had he only heard the innuendos where none were intended? He reviewed the conversation a thousand times, and now he was beginning to doubt. Sherlock was far more often blunt and undisguised in his language. It was John who revelled in metaphor.

But the much bigger question: what did he really want from Sherlock? Besides those hands on his skin, that is.

At five o’clock, before leaving the surgery, he locked himself in the loo to study himself in the mirror. He combed fingers through his hair, smoothed out his collar, and glared at the lines framing his eyes. He wished Sherlock had known him when he was younger, and less marked by time. Then maybe this wouldn’t feel so vulnerable to criticism about the toll age had taken on him. A twenty-something John Watson would have been a lot less prone to self-consciousness.

Had Sherlock known him before Afghanistan, he wouldn’t have to worry about what he really thought of the bullet wound scar.

Then again, the other scars had been with him for a very long time. He supposed, with a sigh of resignation, that no matter his stage in life, he had always walked around in a marred body. One way or another, in this time or that, in any examination of any sort, he couldn’t keep buried the truth of his ugly past—his body tattled on him at every angle. But maybe Sherlock wouldn’t dig too deep. And if he did suspect, hopefully he wouldn’t be react. John didn’t know which was worse: repulsion, or pity. If either was the case, Sherlock would end the examination. And, in his most honest skin, John didn’t want that, either.

#

When he stepped into 221B, the curtains were already drawn closed, the lamps already lit, and the stool already set in the centre of the room. And with it, Sherlock.

He was standing in a posture of anticipating John’s return: hands in his pockets, weight evenly distributed between two legs spread shoulder-width apart, shoulders themselves squared. But that wasn’t all. His dark blue shirt was open (perhaps because it was suddenly too warm to keep closed) to a white vest underneath, revealing a rather well-defined chest. John froze in the doorway, mouth suddenly dry, and his balled up jacket slipping from under his arm and onto the floor.

“John,” Sherlock said by way of greeting, giving a slow, meaningful nod.

“Hello,” said John in reply.

“I suppose you’ll want to close the door for this?”

John closed the door. And locked it.

“You don’t mind that we get started straight away, I hope,” Sherlock continued. “Picking up where we left off?”

“Er-hermy,” said John, meaning to say yes.

The corner of Sherlock’s lip turned up into a well-controlled smirk, and his eyes teased. “Then, if you would please resume your place on the stool.”

Well, he did say _please._ Slowly, John started forward, stiff fingers fumbling at the buttons of his shirt. Technically, they had left off in premature examination of his torso, so he presumed that’s exactly where they would begin. Even so, he toed off his shoes, and pulled off his socks, keenly aware that his every movement was being tracked by the still figure of his most-scrutinous flatmate. When all was prepared he sat.

Sherlock stepped close, very close, and reached for the hem of John’s undershirt, which he dragged upwards and off. Once again, John sat exposed. But though self-conscious, any and all protests had withered with his objections. The examination was little more than a guise for what they were really doing, and though both knew it, they kept up the charade.

But things didn’t start off the way he expected. The first thing Sherlock did, which surprised John, was lay his right hand on John’s left shoulder, while his thumb grazed the old bullet wound, two-and-a-half inches northeast of his heart. He’d seen it already from the back, where the scar tissue was more of a disaster and therefore probably more interesting. But from the front, it was just a small round hole that had healed over with tight, rough, shiny skin. Sherlock wasn’t looking at it with the same level of curiosity as he had the back. Instead, there was an air of . . . what as that? Reverence? Surely not.

“I hope the bastard who did this to you took one in the head.”

The remark was entirely unexpected, not just because of the quivering anger in Sherlock’s voice, but because John, for all he had thought of that horrible moment, had never, even once, considered the _who_ of it. It had been a hailstorm of bullets during a sudden siege. Carnage was everywhere, coming from everywhere, a ubiquitous enemy, so as far as he was concerned, the lone bullet that had torn through his shoulder and nearly ended him in the sand was entirely disconnected from a solitary _who_. But it was an undeniable truth: the single bullet had come from a single assault rifle, the result of a trigger pulled by a single enemy soldier who may or may not have watched him fall, and may or may not have felt the thrill of victory at another man’s demise. John had never thought of the man behind the weapon before, but now, at Sherlock’s words, he tried to picture a face, and it wasn’t the face of an Afghan soldier. It was his father.

“Jesus,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut.

Sherlock’s hand withdrew like had burned John with his touch. “Sorry, did I—?”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

“I shouldn’t have said—”

“It’s nothing you said.”

John’s voice had gone soft. He felt the heat rising in his cheeks. The wrong kind of heat. He tried to recover, clearing his throat, scrambling for some kind of quip to break apart the new tension that had crept between them, this one far more unwelcome.

Next he knew, Sherlock was walking away. John sat stunned, wondering what had just happened, and was on the verge of cursing himself when Sherlock returned, carrying the second stool from the kitchen, and set it directly in front of John. There, he sat, legs spread like John’s and so close their knees touched. John stared at him, not sure anymore what was happening.

“Shall we talk about the elephant in the room?” Sherlock asked.

John all but gaped. Oh. Were they going to _talk_ about it? No more playing? No more teasing glances? No more innuendos? No more pretending this unspoken attraction to one another wasn’t sizzling under a cracking surface, ready to burst forth? But the expression on Sherlock’s face was anything but titillating.

“The what?” he asked stupidly.

Any other day, Sherlock might have rolled his eyes or spoken scornfully at his stupidity. But there was a softness in him that John wasn’t used to when he said, “Your scars, John. The ones your father gave you.”

John balked. “P-pardon?”

“Am I wrong?”

“Sherlock! I—! This was—! You _know_ what this was. I was shot! Why would you think—? What business is it of—? How did you—?”

“Your bullet scar is the only scar so far visible that was created in your adulthood. All the rest are from childhood, some very early childhood. Many of us have such scars. I myself, I hope you’ll soon discover, have a scar above my right knee from the day I decided to have a go with the katana Mycroft brought back from Kyoto at the end of his gap year. One or two such scars are little to raise an eyebrow, but seven or eight? And those are just the ones I’ve seen on your arms and back and neck.”

Neck? John furrowed his brow, trying to keep up. Did he have a scar on his neck? Where? Why had no one told him?

“A clumsy boy?” Sherlock continued. “Possibly. Maybe you did break _both_ index fingers, at the same time and in the same wrenching manner that didn’t heal quite straight, but I do not consider this very likely. More likely, someone broke them for you. Maybe you did burn your arm on a friend’s exhaust pipe, like you told me. But did that same exhaust pipe somehow reach your neck, just below the hairline? And the striations on your back. They’re shallow, subtle, maybe you don’t even know they’re there. But they cross in a pattern I recognise from a case I worked before we met, where a woman had been severely beaten with a belt buckle. I haven’t seen marks like those since, until now. All these things together suggest a pattern of long-term physical abuse in childhood. Lay on top of that being shot in a war, and you get the sort of reaction I just witnessed. I deduced long ago that you harboured some ill feeling toward your father. Your mouth pinches at the very mention of fathers, and your right fist clenches if those mentions involve domestic abuse. I know Harry reminds you of him, so maybe there’s a link to alcoholism. Substance abuse and violence so often go hand in—”

“Stop it,” John said suddenly, unable to bear another word. His mouth had gone dry and he felt dizzy, like he might keel over.

“—hand . . .” Sherlock’s voice trailed off, but he drop his gaze. So John looked away first. His eyes were burning. “I’ve said something wrong.”

“No, Sherlock.” John tried to steady the boat that pitched to and fro and threatened to throw him overboard; anger became his anchor. “Like always, you’ve got it all exactly _right_.” He laughed shortly. “So like a Holmes, to dissect me at a glance, filet me and lay me bare.” With a trembling hand, he rubbed the back of his neck, searching for a scar he didn’t know existed. “Goddamit, why did you have to say any of that?”

“I thought,” said Sherlock, uncomfortably, “you’d want to talk about it.”

John’s head fell back and he moaned to the ceiling. “ _Why?_ ”

“Because—”

“I’ve spent a lifetime  _not_ talking about it, so why would I start _now?_ I mean, _God_.”

“John—”

“So Dad was a shit. So what? Lots of dads are bastards. And, well, it’s not even important, you know? Like, it happened ages and ages ago. I don’t even think about it any— There’s nothing to think about! It wasn’t even that bad. I mean, it wasn’t anything. Not really. I mean, it didn’t _affect_ me. I was a tough kid. Why, does it bother _you?_ Is that what this is about?”

“John.”

“Because you don’t have to bother yourself over it. We can end this right now. In fact, it’s probably best we forget it ever happened. I’m good at that. You’ll see.”

He awaited no excuses, apologies, or protests. John didn’t exactly shoot off the chair—he wasn’t an overdramatic adolescent, never had been—but he was the sort that, once a decision was made, it was made, and he got straight to it. So he swung himself tightly to the side, mindful to not touch Sherlock who sat so close, rose swiftly to his feet, and marched out of the room. Then he shut himself into his room, angry at Sherlock, angry at his father, and angry at himself, most of all.

#

His plan was to skip dinner entirely, fall asleep early, and leave for the surgery next morning before Sherlock left his bedroom. Avoiding seemed the best plan for the foreseeable future.

He wasn’t counting on Sherlock’s own plan.

It had been only an hour. John was lying on the bed, fully dressed, arms crossed behind his head, legs crossed at the ankle, his general disposition simply _cross_ , as he tried not to but couldn’t help review all that had happened and what he might have said or done differently to avoid it entirely—he should never have mentioned Sherlock’s failure with the corpse that was not, in fact, Irene Adler—when there came a light tapping at his door.

He sat bolt upright and swung his legs off the mattress so his feet hit the floor. Startled, he could think of nothing to shout, although “Go away!” was trying to find its way to his lips. But he didn’t have the chance before Sherlock turned the door handle and poked his head through the crack. Their eyes met (John hoped his smoldered disapproval and not embarrassment) and Sherlock gave himself permission to step into the room.

Further putting John off his guard was what Sherlock was wearing. Which was to say, he wasn’t wearing much. He donned his dressing gown, but as far as John could tell, not much else. His eyes were drawn to the v of skin showing beneath the gown, and to his bare legs and feet; when he moved, though, he caught a flash of boxer shorts and relaxed a little. Still, this sudden appearance was entirely unexpected and left John with a mouth hanging open before he found any words at all, which, when they came out, found form in nonsensical profanity.

“The shitty fuckery?”

“Eloquent, John.” Sherlock smiled, though a little weakly, and stopped at the door.

“What . . . what’s going on, Sherlock?”

“A couple of things,” said Sherlock, “that I want to show you. If I may?”

Warily, John nodded, and watched with saucer eyes as Sherlock closed the door, came toward the bed, and untied the belt around his dressing gown. John’s eyes went wide, and he was on the cusp of telling Sherlock to stop whatever he was doing when he unceremoniously shrugged out of the dressing gown. It pooled on the floor around his ankles and left him nearly bare in front of John, but for the silky maroon boxers.

John held his breath.

But something else was happening.

“You’ve probably already noticed _these_ ,” Sherlock said, extending his forearms.

Alongside the prominent veins were the tell-tale track marks of a former drug addict, round scars, now very faint, but unmistakable all the same. Watching Sherlock’s face for any objection, John reached for his arms with two gentle hands and drew him one step nearer for closer inspection. That was when he realized what was happening: Sherlock was welcoming an inspection of his _own_ body, in place of John’s.

“I was twelve years old when I had my first cigarette. Seventeen when I took my first shot of something, shall we say, a little more potent. First time in rehab at twenty, second at twenty-two. I was messed up for a long time, John. Big surprise, I know.” He smiled wryly.

John shook his head, unable to pull his eyes away from the scars. Yes, he’d seen them before, but he’d never asked about them. It had seemed, well, rude. “Why? What was . . . wrong?”

Sherlock shrugged, but not dismissive of the question. More like, he was dismissive of his younger self. “Wrong? Nothing, really. I was an idiot. A brilliant idiot. And I was bored. Needed stimulation. And I found it. In the form of something chemical.” A shadow crossed over his face, and the sad smile couldn’t hold. “I wouldn’t say my home life was . . . harmful. But my father was never there, and when he was, he wasn’t really. He was an important man, a government man, like what Mycroft became, and his family was inconsequential to the life he really wanted to lead. For her part, my mother had her clubs and causes and soirees and could hardly be said to be an _active_ parent. I suppose I felt . . .”

 _Neglected_ , John thought.

“Untethered. I was bored at school, bored at home, had no friends because none of them could keep up with me. And frankly, I had no patience for their pedestrian brains. Made for kind of a lonely kid. I admit that now, though I wouldn’t then. And I was more ordinary, in some ways, than even I would ever want to own up to. For one, I wanted to rebel. But against what? There were no boundaries to push at home. So. I found others.”

“How bad did it get?”

With a gentle tug on Sherlock’s arm, he drew him to sit on the bed.

“Could have been worse.” Sherlock sank down beside him. “That is, I could have ended up dead. Got mixed up with the wrong kind of people, to start. The drug life is all about the wrong kind of people. You do things, think things, that . . . no healthy person would do or think. Got myself into a few scrapes. Back-alley skirmishes with other idiot druggies like me. Broke my nose once. Couple of ribs. Cracked a tooth.” He tapped the side of his jaw. “And this.” He twisted to point to a three-inch scar on his abdomen, a little to the right and just above the line of his boxers.

John shook his head somberly. “So, _not_ appendicitis.”

“Nope. Four-inch blade. Though I should mention, I did lose the appendix because of that little scuffle. That’s what it took for me to realize I was in over my head. I lost a lot of money, too. Mycroft’s money. He’s the one who got me straightened out, more or less. Lost a lot of his hair and a fair bit of weight doing it, too.” He grinned a bit remorsefully, though with something John thought might have been fondness. “Lestrade eased the boredom, once he started letting me solve some of his trickier cases. Brainwork was my salvation. Solving cases helped a lot. Hell of a lot. But the cravings themselves . . . They never seemed to go away. Most nights, they drove me mad. I had promised Mycroft I would never use again, not even smoke. So I got my fix from nicotine patches. That seemed to do the trick.” He turned his head toward John. “Until I met you.”

John’s eyebrows stitched together. “You were wearing three patches the night I met you.”

“Yes.” He absentmindedly rubbed an arm. “I never needed them again.”

“Oh.” John didn’t know what to say. The warmth he had been anticipating all day had returned, but it was not as he expected. It was not the kind of, what was the word? _Sensual_ warmth he had been craving. No, it was something else entirely, a feeling of wanting to soothe past wounds, to hold a heart in his hands and protect it, to make joyful someone who had too long been sad. But . . . no, that wasn’t quite right. He’d already been doing exactly that. Perhaps Sherlock wasn’t stating it in those terms, exactly, but he was stating it all the same. Since their meeting, John had become someone special to Sherlock, someone important, someone . . . he loved. And God, that resonated throughout his whole body. Sherlock loved John, and the warmth? It was John loving Sherlock in return.

Sherlock had lain himself bare, and was awaiting a response.

So John touched him. He ran a thumb across the knife wound, gently, but there was heat in his voice when he said, “I hope the bastard who did this to you took one in the gut.”

His fingers did not withdraw, but he lifted his eyes to meet Sherlock’s, hoping he understood the apology meant with those words, and the confession. He wasn’t very good at bald confessions.

The genius understood him.

“I think, John, that, given my recklessness and propensity toward risky behaviors, the likelihood of your demise pales in comparison to my own. I shudder to think that my own body should be misidentified. It may, therefore, be prudent that someone who knows me well . . .”

John nodded. “Yes.”

“. . . should know my body just as well . . .”

“Yes.”

“. . . at least as well as I do . . .”

“God, Sherlock.” He dragged his hand up Sherlock’s abdomen and over his chest, and by the time he reached the back of Sherlock’s neck, Sherlock was already leaning forward, his eyes fixed on John’s mouth, and it was no longer a matter of if, but when, and the answer, of course, was now.

Right now.


	5. Chapter 5

When John was five, his father broke his arm. He was being a pain in the arse (Dad’s words, not his) and refused to go to bed. There was whining, crying, screaming, stomping—all on John’s part. Dad shut him up. He never complained about his bedtime again.

When John was seven, he sneaked into his grandfather’s parlour and sneaked out with two pistols from his antique gun collection. He wanted to play soldiers, and he wasn’t going to keep them, he really wasn’t. They weren’t even loaded. But Dad found him in the field, pretend shooting at pretend enemy soldiers to defend his granddad’s farm from pretend invasion. Dad snatched the guns away, shouting something about their value being greater than what John himself was worth, and John, with underdeveloped control over his emotions, got angry, and started shooting at his father with his fingers, making little _pew pew_ noises. Dad grabbed his little _pew-pewing_ fingers and twisted them like knobs.

When John was eight, he missed half of the school year because Dad didn’t want teachers to comment on all of his bruises … and because of a handful of trips to A&E for a head wound, a dislocated shoulder, and an unexplained seizure. It was the same year the NSPCC made their first visit to the Watson household, following an anonymous tip that something was wrong with the children. But Dad kept an immaculate house, and they came at a time between beatings, when the bruises had already faded, Dad had run out of beers in the fridge, and Harry was in one of her rare good moods. They didn’t find anything, just a single father who cared for the wellbeing of his children. And when they left, Dad said he loved them both, and he was sorry for getting angry in the past, and it wouldn’t happen again.

It was a promise he kept until John was nine.

But he tried hard, he really did, to be a good dad, a better dad. He started taking John and Harry on more holidays—it didn’t matter that they missed so much school—and bought them more sweets and played more games. So what if a weekend in Cornwall also meant illegal gambling and shouting matches with the hotel owners and getting kicked out of their room? Sleeping on the beach could be fun, Dad said, and they made it an adventure. And so what if sweets also meant peach or peppermint schnapps, and playing sometimes meant drinking games between Harry and John, while Dad laughed and egged them on? John only got alcohol poisoning once, that he remembered. That time, he’d wound up seizing on the floor and again in A&E, and the NSPCC soon after made its second house call. John confessed to drinking the bottle, but on his own. Dad didn’t know, he’d said. It was a lie. But he didn’t want Dad to get into trouble.

He was afraid of his father, most days. But that was an embarrassing admission, so he didn’t. Admit it, that is. Not even to Harry. Especially not to Harry. She was so _unafraid_. She would get right up in Dad’s face, and scream, and use all kinds of profanity, and when he inevitably smacked her, she smacked him right back. John admired that. He wanted to be just like her, but he was too afraid, and he hated himself for being such a coward. Really, his only weapon was to be the good son. If he was good, Dad wouldn’t have any reason to hate him and punish him.

He started playing rugby when he was eleven. It was a reason not to go home after school, and Dad seemed pleased that he was doing something athletic. It’s what proper boys did, and John would do nearly anything to not be called a pansy or poofter again. Dad was so excited, in fact, that he started to take John to the park on weekends to run exercises with him, make him faster, make him stronger, make him better. “A star,” said Dad. “Gonna make you a star.”

John did get faster, stronger, better. But not enough. Dad shouted, he screamed, he made him work harder, harder, and it never seemed good enough. And when it wasn’t good enough, Dad got mean.

As soon as he was able, John started working. For the pocket money, yes, but more importantly, to avoid going home. He was too young to be hired on properly, not even to flip burgers or deliver newspapers. So he asked the neighbours for work: walking their dogs, weeding their flowerbeds, washing their cars. It wasn’t much, but that wasn’t the point. Over time, however, he was able to save up enough to buy himself a pair of rugby cleats; the other boys oohed and awwed. John wasn’t used to that. So he wrote his name in marker on the inside of the shoes, wore them only on the pitch, wiped off the mud after every match, and stored them in a shoebox under his bed. He was very proud of his shoes.

John was fifteen years old when he snapped. Dad was riding his ass. Not fast enough, not strong enough. Dad screamed in his overheated, sweat-shiny face. John screamed back. Dad pushed him. He pushed back. He pushed hard. Dad fell. And there John stood over his father, with a dozen or more onlookers in the park, shouting that he didn’t want to play anymore. It wasn’t fun, and it was Dad’s fault, all his fault. He left his father in the park and stomped his way home, flinging himself on his bed. Harry wasn’t there, of course. She’d run away the winter before. Just one more way John admired her, loved her, and hated her so, so much. He heard Dad come home but didn’t move. He waited. There would be repercussions, surely. But Dad seemed calm. He didn’t come down the hall. Nothing happened. Maybe it would be okay. Maybe he even felt sorry for the way he’d been pushing his son so hard, all those years. Maybe things would change.

Although he wanted to quit, he couldn’t do so in the middle of the season. That is, he couldn’t do that to his teammates, his coach. They wouldn’t be impressed by sudden desertion, and who could blame them? No one would understand why. So on a Saturday, John got up, showered, dressed for the match, and went looking for his shoes. They weren’t in the box.

He tore the house upside down looking for them, and Dad followed him around, mocking his panic, saying, “You said you didn’t want to play. You said it, Johnny.”

“Where are they!?”

“Threw them out. You said you didn’t want to play.”

Furious, and mortified, John arrived on the pitch in regular trainers. His teammates laughed at him, then berated him, and the coach shouted at him and benched him. He couldn’t play without the proper gear, so he wouldn’t play at all. As it turned out, they didn’t need him after all. Not like he thought they did. So he sat on the sidelines and watched the game go on without him.

Halfway through, the wind picked up and the clouds darkened. Soon, the rains fell at a slant. Invigorated by the storm, the boys played harder, churning the mud with their cleats, tackling one another into the dark wet earth, smiling all the way. In the end, they won outright, and John had a sinking feeling of being superfluous to the game altogether. He might as well not have even been there.

When it was over, the pitch emptied, the crowds dispersed to get out of the rain, and John was left alone on the sidelines, not moving a muscle, just letting the rains lash him.

Then he saw a figure crossing the pitch toward him. It was his father. He started to his feet, but otherwise held his ground.

“How ’bout it, John?” said Dad. “Can you best me?” He carried a rugby ball under his arm.

He didn’t want to try. He was cold and wet and unhappy, but when he opened his mouth to protest, to say that he didn’t even have on the right shoes, his eyes fell to his father’s feet and saw them: his cleats. “You—!” he started.

But Dad suddenly chucked him the ball. He caught it, and like he was programmed, he ran forward, his feet trying to run sideways and evade the tackle. But he had no purchase, not in the wet grass, not without his cleats. He slid. And even before he hit the ground, Dad caught him around the waist and drove him into it, the ball trapped under his stomach.

Dad didn’t get up. An arm overlaid his neck, and he spit into John’s ear, “Think you’re a big man? Huh? Think you’re a better man than _me?_ ”

John’s face sank into the mud as he squirmed and tried to break free.

“Pathetic, John. You’re _pathetic!_ ”

He grabbed the back of John’s head and shoved his face deeper into the mud. Then he got off. But when he turned to walk away, he stepped on John’s left buttock. Only later did John learn that when his dad had stolen his cleats, he had driven nails through the soles, their tips poking half an inch through the rubber spikes. They were more weapon now than shoe. All at once, eight spikes punched through John’s skin, then tore themselves out. John screamed into the mud, not knowing then what had just happened, only that it hurt like hell.

Later that night, he assessed the damage, locked in bathroom, biting so hard on his own tongue he drew blood, just to keep from whimpering as he tried to reach around and treat the wounds. A large, black bruise made things extra tender. The next day, he lied when Dad asked if he was very hurt. Apparently, this side of sobriety, he was embarrassed by the altercation. John wasn’t trying to spare his father’s feelings. Just his own. It was a terrible thing, hating your father. It seemed more terrible to ever admit it out loud.

“I’m fine,” he said. Then he found an excuse to leave the room.

That was all either of them ever said about it.

#

Sherlock lay back, sinking into the mattress, but his head didn’t touch the pillow. His neck arched high, straining for John’s lips. Merciful, John met them. The kiss was more than a kiss. It was a statement of everything unspoken, which yearned for expression but no longer needed to be said. John’s mouth opened over his, seeking an unexplored warmth, and as his tongue slid past Sherlock’s parted teeth and along his own tongue, his body flooded with heat, and he felt heavy in the most wonderful of ways.

Quite of its own accord, one of Sherlock’s legs wrapped around John’s body and pulled him nearer to press their two bodies together. The answer to heaviness was more weight, of course, of course, and John positively sank into him. Sherlock gasped and pulled John’s breath inside of him. John shuddered and moaned.

Their hands roved. Restless, aimless, then with sudden purpose. John abruptly sat back on his knees, tore his shirt over his head, then returned. Sherlock was already half naked, and the feeling of their two bare chests pressed together, the friction against nipple and navel, was simply not enough. John cupped Sherlock’s head and sucked his neck. Sherlock tangled his left hand in in John’s hair and raked his back with with clawed fingers. Then, eager, unrepentant, he slipped a hand into the waistband of John’s underwear, beneath his trousers, and grabbed a fistful of arse.

“Ah!” John choked.

Sherlock’s hand retreated sharply. “What did I do?”

“Nothing, nothing, it’s, uh, it’s . . .”

“John.” He stroked the back of John’s head. John, looking down at him with such uncertain, fearful eyes, parted his lips like he would speak. But he didn’t. Softly, Sherlock kissed him again. “I’ve embarrassed you.”

“No . . .”

“You can say. You can tell me. Anything.”

He kissed him again, sealing his words like a promise. Though he didn’t know what was wrong, exactly, he suspected it had something to do with, not any kind of reluctance to be with a man, but owing to a _certain_ man in John’s life who had hurt him. To what extent, Sherlock was still discovering.

John swallowed the kiss and closed his eyes, contemplating what he might say. Then he gently rolled off Sherlock and lay at his side. But his eyes didn’t open.

“It’s not a big deal. It’s just . . .”

“Mm-hm?” Sherlock prompted carefully.

“It’s just, some of my partners aren’t comfortable with . . . That is, they don’t always react well when they see . . .”

“And you think I won’t react well when I see you naked?”

“My arse, Sherlock. _God_.” He threw an arm over his eyes, but that didn’t keep Sherlock from seeing the blush.

“Hey.” He put a hand to John’s side and felt the ribs swell and deflate with John’s labored breaths. “You think I’ll be shocked.”

“Repulsed, more like.”

“I’m not a man easily repulsed. And if you tell me what happened, I’m not likely to be shocked, either.”

For what felt like long minutes, they lay there in silence. Sherlock never removed his hand, only continued a soft, patient stroking of skin and hair, a language John returned. When the breathing stabilized, and when the color receded from his cheeks, John began to talk.

He told Sherlock the story of his father, what it had been like being raised by a single parent with an alcohol addiction and a short temper, how Harry had escaped first, but how John had to join the RAMC to get away from him, and when he died, John hadn’t even come home for the funeral. He confirmed many of Sherlock’s deductions about broken fingers and burns and cuts, but mentioned other abuses that had long since faded. Faded from his body anyway. His mind was a different matter entirely. And he told about one of the more humiliating of scars—a pattern of circles on his right buttock from his own cleats, which his father had stolen and fashioned into weapons.

“I couldn’t sit for a week,” said John. “And ever since . . . Well, you can imagine what women have thought in bed. And army blokes in the showers. I can usually take the teasing and the guessing at what happened. Honestly, I can. But it’s not exactly something that people want to get close to, you know?”

“Do you tell them what happened?”

“I don’t want their pity.”

“What about their understanding?”

John shook his head. “No one would understand _this_. So why tell them?”

“Maybe you should risk it. Just once.” Sherlock smiled. “See how it goes.”

Still, John hesitated.

“You know how I feel about you,” Sherlock said. “Knowing how your father treated you doesn’t change that. Nothing you can show me would _ever_ change that.”

John’s eyebrows lifted. “How you feel about me?”

Rolling his eyes, Sherlock said, “Don’t be an idiot. It’s the most obvious thing in the world.”

“Just a few days ago, it wasn’t.”

“Am I alone in feeling as I do?”

John touched his face, then brought their lips together again, softly. “You know you’re not.”

“Just a few days ago, I didn’t.”

“You love me then.”

“And you love me. Glad we got that cleared up.”

With a laugh, and with adoration in his eyes, John scooted a little closer, knees knocking against Sherlock’s and then sliding between. “I do trust you.”

“Then let me show you that I adore every inch of you.”

At last deciding, John nodded. Sweetly, Sherlock kissed him one more time, then gently manoeuvred John onto his stomach. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

He repositioned himself, hovering above on all fours and barely touching, except to drop dew-like kisses on the back of John’s neck, then trailing down his back, one vertebra at a time. He drew his fingers across shoulders and shoulder blades, massaging as he went, listening for John’s satisfied breaths, his appreciative moans. Then he placed a kiss in the small of John’s back and began to slip off his underwear. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

Like John himself, John’s arse was small and round and beautiful, and yes, scarred. The right was unmarred, but the left, just as John had warned, bore eight distinct marks about the size of a 5-pence coin, dark pink and slightly raised, and evenly spaced out across the skin of buttock and upper thigh. A curious sight, for anyone who didn’t know what had happened. It might be mistaken for bug bites. Sherlock placed his large hands over the warm flesh, treating one globe as much as the other, kneading softly. “Okay?”

John nodded into the pillow. “Yes,” he said breathlessly.

“You’re beautiful.”

He lowered his mouth and kissed each circular scar, slowly, lovingly. John groaned, and the noise of it went straight to Sherlock’s heavy cock. He hmmed with need while kissing him all over, groping, spreading, and suddenly, John got his knees under himself to push his arse higher into the air, allowing Sherlock to lick him deep.

“Ah!” John gasped with pleasure.

“I take it that was okay, too.”

“Stop asking. It’s all fine, all of it, I promise. Don’t stop!”

Encouraged, Sherlock returned, tongue flattening long and hot, then spiking thin and with purpose. John panted and writhed, his hands fisting in the sheets, wanting more, and Sherlock didn’t hold back. He gave and gave, wanting John to know how much he was loved, not just his heart, which had won Sherlock over the night they had met, or just his mind, which he had discovered held its own delights, but yes, his body, too, this part of his body. It was beautiful. Its markings were a story of the man, all he had endured and survived and overcome. Badges of honour. Testaments of triumph. He worshiped them, and desired nothing more than that John know it, beyond any doubt.

Suddenly, though, John pulled away and flipped himself onto his back. Reaching forward, he cupped Sherlock’s face in both hands and pulled his body over his, kissing him deeply. Then John’s hands were on his skin, high and low, and eagerly he pushed aside Sherlock’s underwear until the two of them were entirely bare with each other, at last completely and utterly and unashamedly exposed. No more secrets. No more more hiding. Whatever past had haunted John disappeared in the present that was just the two of them, exploring one another, coming together like never before, and knowing each other more completely and perfectly than either had expected.

They became one, Sherlock in John, John surrounding Sherlock. Neither had anticipated how wonderful it could be. Every heated sigh, every shivering hair, every kneaded muscle awakened a body Sherlock hadn’t known had been so long asleep. Every part of him was singing. John was sighing, gasping. Sherlock thrusted and John arced, and they were both rising, rising, until both cried out and grasped at one another as if in falling, they would lose each other if they didn’t hold on.

When their breathing had steadied again, and Sherlock lay at John’s side, he ran a hand slowly across John’s sweaty brow and kissed his cheek.

“I was wrong,” said John.

“Hmm?” Sherlock’s hand had trailed down his glistening throat and over his pectorals. He rested his palm over the bullet wound.

“Your experiment. I said it was stupid. It was decidedly brilliant.”

“To be fair,” Sherlock said, “this wasn’t the outcome I had imagined.”

“No? Having sex with your best mate didn’t occur to you as a consequence of misidentifying a corpse?”

Sherlock laughed. “I admit, such a result didn’t occur to me. You always surprise me, John Watson. I like being surprised.”

“Did it work though? Did you get the”—he rolled his head and smiled—“data that you needed?”

“Hmm,” he hummed again. “I might need a few more repetitions to memorise you perfectly.”

“Just a few?” He giggled.

“John . . .” He suddenly felt quite serious. “If you ever . . . I ever did lose you . . . I would never forgive myself.”

“Hey.” John lifted Sherlock’s hand off his shoulder and kissed his fingertips. Then he rolled to the side to face him more directly.

“I would die for you, if that’s what it would take, to keep you safe.”

“Don’t say that.” He threaded his hands through Sherlock’s hair, damp with sweat. “I’m not going anywhere. Neither are you. We need each other, Sherlock. We’ve come through hell to find one another, and I’ll fight hell itself to keep us right here, like this.”

They reached for each other again, softly, and kissed.

Someday, Sherlock thought, he would have to thank Irene Adler for her deception.


End file.
